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Sunday, July 29, 2012

The European Space Agency (ESA) is moving to approve its first lunar
landing mission. While the mission will
carry out some science, the primary goals of the mission will be to fully
develop and demonstrate autonomous landing in the rugged terrain near the moon’s
south pole.

The lander will use only its autopilot while descending over rough
terrain. The craft’s computer will
compare images it takes and it descends along with terrain maps generated with
LiDAR to maps stored in its memory. By
recognizing landmarks, the lander’s computers will adjust direction and descent
speed to safely descend toward an preselected landing area. The final landing location will be selected
by the craft itself to avoid boulders, steep slopes, and shadows that would
prevent its solar panels from generating power.

Once on the surface, the lander will become a science station. While previous lunar landers have stayed near
the lunar tropics (all landed within 40 degrees of the equator), this mission
will explore a new region and possibly new soil types. The landing
zone will be at the edge of the largest impact basin in the Solar System, the
Aitken Basin. Mission planners hope that
the instruments will sample soils and rocks thrown up from the lower lunar
crust and mantle. Another set of
instruments will explore the interaction of the plasma environment at the lunar
surface with the omnipresent lunar dust.

Planning documents talk about a nominal surface mission of 14 days
following landing in the sunlight when the primary science will be
conducted. That will be followed by 14
days of night in which the lander will use its batteries to keep essential
systems from failing in the chill.
Mission planners plan to reacquired communications with the lander with
sunrise, and the mission could potentially last for a number of months.

Approval of the mission is expected this fall by ESA. Landing is planned for 2018.

Editorial Thoughts: In many respects, this mission
has similar goals to NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission that landed in 1997. The Pathfinder mission allowed NASA to prove
the technology for landing smaller than flagship-scale missions on Mars. The entry, descent, and landing technologies
developed for that mission directly enabled the landing of the Mars Exploration
Rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2004. Several
teams are proposing future rover missions that would land on Mars using
Pathfinder’s airbag technologies. (NASA
later developed a second Mars EDL system for small stationary landers for the
Phoenix mission that may serve as the platform for the InSight mission
currently in competition for selection as the next Discovery mission.)

ESA’s ExoMars was initially conceived as a technology development and
demonstration mission, although it has become primarily a science mission as
its definition firmed. Aspects of the
original goal remain with a demonstration lander in 2016 that will prove a
landing system for future Mars missions.

I believe that the pictures taken by the lander may prove to be some of the most
iconic of the space age. The Earth will
lie close to the horizon, ensuring that
images will capture the mountainous landscape of the lunar southern polar
region with the Earth hovering just above.
We may again see our world as a fragile oasis and as part of a double
planet system.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Those
of us who follow the plans for future planetary exploration are waiting for two
breaking events.The first, expected in
July based on NASA’s previously announced schedule but subject to delay, is the
announcement of which mission it has selected for the Discovery mission.Either the interior of Mars, the
heterogeneity of a comet, or the surface of a Titan lake will be the focus of a
great mission.(It may say something about
what kind of person that I am, but whatever is announced, I will feel that two
great opportunities have been passed over.)

The second event, with a firm schedule
down to the minute, will be the success or failure of the Curiosity rover’s
landing on Mars. While this may seem
like current rather than future planetary exploration, a success will encourage
more funding for planetary missions while a failure will do the opposite. SpacePolitics.com quotes the head of NASA’s
planetary science program on the importance of this landing in a speech given
to lunar scientists, “’It’s absolutely essential
for everybody in this room to recognize that, whether you’ve been following
this or not, this is going to have an enormous effect on you, personally,” he [Jim
Green] told a room filled primarily with lunar scientists. “Whether it’s
successful or not successful, it will have an enormous effect on the planetary
budget, and therefore, all of our careers… The landing of MSL will be
absolutely critical, and we really need to take note of what’s going to happen
here.”

So
while we wait, I thought I’d provide updates in this post and following ones on
a number of items that don’t quite deserve a post of their own.

First
up, published today, is a long article in the journal Science on the options
for exploring Mars. (Unfortunately, it’s
subscription only or can be purchased for $15.
You can read the first paragraph and follow the link to purchase.) Richard Kerr reports on the quandary that the
Mars program finds itself in. With the
exception of sample return and the exploration of Mars’ interior (the focus of
one of the Discovery missions in competition), all the major firsts for Mars
have been done (assuming the Curiosity mission is a success). So while future orbiters could carry better
versions of instruments and rovers could land in new places, the feeling is
that the results wouldn’t be revolutionary enough to compete with missions to
other worlds. Kerr quotes the head of
the Decadal Survey’s Mars panel on the value of future incremental missions: “[Phillip]Christensen [Arizona State University, Tempe]
says he would love to fly a souped-up version of the instrument [a better
multispectral imager] on a future [orbiter] mission. “But is that essential to
our understanding of Mars? I think not,” he says. “It wouldn't be
revolutionizing. You can do only so much from orbit, no matter how good your
spectrometer. We're pretty darn close to doing what you can from orbit.”

Kerr points out that other scientists disagree
with Christensen’s (and many others) view on the value of incremental
missions. John Grotzinger, the
Curiosity rover’s project scientist, for example, is promoting the idea of a
series of smaller rovers in the class of the Opportunity rover currently at
Mars but with significantly more advanced instruments (see below).

Kerr ends his article by pointing out that NASA’s
Mars program is becoming entangled with NASA’s human spaceflight program, which
has a long term goal of reaching Mars.
He finishes the article with an assessment of the risks of this
strategy: “In other words, planetary science would be riding human
exploration's coattails to Mars in the FY 2014 budget request. ‘That is fraught
with danger,’ Christensen says. ‘If you attach yourselves to human exploration,’
[Frances] Bagenal [University of Colorado, Boulder] says, ‘you end up
tailoring your science to address the needs of human exploration. Then they
change their mind. The lunar people have been down that road several times.’”

Another
article out this week from the journal Nature, explores the idea behind what an
incremental rover mission might do.
(Nature made this article freely available here.) In a previous posthttp://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2012/06/next-generation-mers-for-mars.html, I described ideas for
reusing the basic design of the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity
and outfitting them with modern instrument suites (a lot of instrument
development has occurred since Spirit and Opportunity were designed). One idea would be outfit one or more rovers
with a new generation of instruments that can date Martian rocks to within a
few tens of millions of years. The article
explains how important these measurements would be, “If
chronology on the Moon is still uncertain, then Mars is a mess. The
crater-count method does not work as well there, mainly because the wind, water
and frost that sculpt the surface also erase craters… With a portable system,
researchers could decipher how long volcanism lasted on Mars and when it
stopped. They could find out when the planet's warm, wet and possibly habitable
environment gave way to the cold desert it has been for several billion years. ‘If
any evidence is found for life, we sure as heck will want to know when it was
there,” says [Hap] McSween [University of
Tennessee in Knoxville].’”

The article provides a fascinating insight into the process and
challenges of developing cutting edge capabilities for new planetary
missions. I highly recommend it.

Editorial
Thoughts: These two articles together highlight a tension in how science is
done. The easiest way to make big
discoveries is to simply be the first to go somewhere (or at least be the first
to bring a new type of instrument such as the first high resolution imaging spectrometers
in Mars orbit). The naturalists who
explored the world during the European age of discovery had a field day. Everywhere they went, there was a new
discovery waiting for them. (To get an
idea of what the opportunity was like, look up how many species the Scottish
naturalist David Douglas named for himself or had named for him in the Pacific
coast states of the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Douglas_(botanist)). However, it has taken decades of intensive
science to follow up on these discoveries and to start to really understand the
geology, biology, and ecology of these areas.
In the Pacific Northwest, where Douglas was an early European explorer,
we didn’t even understand the ecological importance of old-growth forests until
the last two to three decades, and my colleagues are still trying to understand
many key facts how the develop and function.

Planetary
science has been in the lucky position of those European naturalists in being
able to make many astounding discoveries simply by delivering a spacecraft or
an instrument to a new place. The opportunity
for those relatively cheap and frequent missions becomes fewer with each new
mission. As a result, the planetary
community is left to decide whether to recommend less expensive missions that
do the yeomen’s work of filling in the details or propose the often expensive
bigger missions that do the new and extraordinary. I believe that the fear is that the
politicians may balk at paying hundreds of millions of dollars per mission for
the former and equally may balk at paying billions of dollars for the latter.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Phil Horzempareturns with another post, this one on an interesting idea for a first joint human-robotic mission to the far side of the moon.

I've just finished a revision to a paper, so I will have more time to post in the near future.

_________________

The Moonrise robotic sample
return mission has been proposed several times as a New Frontiers effort. Van discussed some of the aspects of the
mission in previous posts. Recently, the Moonrise team has released more
details of how the mission would be conducted.
I will first review those aspects, before considering a new twist to
this mission involving possible participation by NASA's manned spaceflight
program.

Figure 1

Figure 2

The Barcelona report (1)
is the first detailed public disclosure of Moonrise's mission and spacecraft
design. Figure 1 shows the
outline of the mission operations. Since
Moonrise is designed to return samples from the Far Side of the Moon, it
requires a relay element which is provided by a mini-comsat. Note that both the lander and the relay go
through the Lunar L2 location on the way to their target. This is perhaps to save fuel and to "wring-out"
the craft before the events surrounding sample acquisition. The Moonrise team has picked a landing site
near the Bose crater within the South Pole - Aitken Basin on the Far Side. (Figure
2)

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows the
entire launch package. Note the large
SRM (Solid Rocket Motor) required to cancel most of the lander's velocity as it
descends from LL2 to the Moon's surface.
It appears that the Moonrise lander and its descent sequence are very
similar to that of the Surveyor landers of the 1960's. After retro-fire is complete, the large SRM
is ejected, with final approach, and velocity cancellation, handled by vernier
thrusters.

Figure 4

The lander spends 10 days on
the lunar surface, utilizing a scoop to gather samples. There is a sieve on the scoop so that a
larger number of small rocks are collected.
The lander is solar-powered, requiring that the surface mission be
accomplished within the 2-week-long lunar day.
With the completion of sample acquisition, the LAV (Lunar Ascent
Vehicle) is launched. (Figure 4)
The Earth-return capsule may go through the LL2 on its journey, again perhaps
to save fuel.

The Moonrise proposal was
down-selected as a finalist in the last 2 New Frontiers competitions, but was
not chosen to proceed to flight. It
seems likely that it will again be put forward for the next NF AO (Announcement
of Opportunity). However, recently, a
new approach to collecting samples from the Moon's Far Side has been
proposed.

With the arrival of the Orion
manned exploration capsule in a few years, it is possible that it could join an
unmanned Moonrise mission to collect lunar samples. In this new approach, the Orion would fly to
the Lunar L2 location and "hover" there for 1 - 6 months. The astronaut crew would not land on the Moon,
but would tele-operate an unmanned rover on the Moon's Farside. It seems that details have not been
fleshed-out, but let me suggest one scenario.
A Moonrise lander could be dispatched to a landing on the Farside,
delivering the tele-operated rover. If
the Moonrise mission were flown in conjunction with a manned Orion mission,
then the relay comsat and Earth-return capsule could be deleted from the
Moonrise payload, freeing up mass needed to accommodate the rover.
This surface mission would still need to be completed within 10 days
because of thermal and solar-power restrictions. However, the tele-presence of humans would
greatly assist the collection of samples.
One could imagine a long-term surface mission lasting several months,
but that would call for a lander modified for the 2-week-long ultra-cold lunar
nights.

Figure 5

Just recently, at the 5th
Lunar Science Forum, Jack Burns spoke about an Orion mission to the Lunar L2
location (2). A diagram of such a
mission, from an earlier proposal by Burns, is shown in Figure 5. At the Lunar Science Forum, he presented a
modified version of this mission that would see the Orion crew "settling
in" at the LL2 location for about 90 days, instead of the 15 days
indicated in Fig. 5. In addition, Burns
hinted that such a manned mission could include the task of collecting lunar
samples delivered to the LL2 location by a Moonrise-type vehicle. He pointed out that this mission would return
to Earth with lunar samples without needing to actually land a crew on the
surface. Once the sample collection
phase of the Moonrise mission was complete, the rover would still remain on the
Moon's surface, available to pursue more exploration, guided by the Orion crew
at LL2.

This hypothetical mission
between NASA's Science Mission Directorate and Human Space Flight, could serve
as a dry-run for a similar joint sample-collection effort at Mars, as described
in my post of July 5, 2012. The Martian
mission would see an astronaut crew collecting samples launched into orbit
around Mars by unmanned precursors. As
with the L2-Farside mission, that crew could also tele-operate a rover to
gather additional samples. The
L2-Farside mission could serve as a valuable precursor for such a Mars
mission. To quote from a Lockheed-Martin
document (3), "The lunar L2-Farside missions will develop and
practice operational methods for this type of human/robot
exploration." So, as NASA pushes
towards developing the experience base required for a manned Mars mission, we
may see valuable lunar science data obtained along the way.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Sometime in the next two weeks, NASA should announce the selection of
the next Discovery mission to either Mars (Insight geophysical lander), a comet
(CHOPPER), or the lakes of Titan (TiME).
The journal Nature’s website has a good summary of the mission
candidates (as, I hope, this blog does here).
Nature also published an analysis of the Discovery program with sobering
implications. The last selection of a
Discovery mission (the twin GRAIL orbiters currently studying the interior of
the moon) was five years ago. With the
currently planned budgets, the next selection of a Discovery mission will come approximately
five years hence.

A two-per-decade cadence of Discovery missions is not what was
originally planned for the program. The program was envisioned as a frequent
series of relatively inexpensive missions that allowed an element of risk not possible in more expensive
missions. As the first figure below shows,
the early missions fulfilled that goal with a rapid clip of missions costing
less than $340M. Over time, however, the
complexity of missions has increased with commensurate increase in mission
costs (see the second figure). Given tight budgets, the result has been to
spread out the selection of new missions with, as mentioned above, five years
between the selection of the GRAIL mission launched last year and the previous
mission.

Discovery mission costs by year of launch.

The Discovery 12 mission will be the one selected this summer.

Data from the Nature article based on data from the Aerospace Corporation.

Discovery mission cost relative to mission complexity.

Data from the Nature article based on data from the Aerospace Corporation.

Last year’s planetary Decadal Survey recognized both the problem of too
few missions and the increasing complexity of missions. It recommended that the frequency of missions
be increased to five per decade and the cost cap be increased to $500M per
mission (from $425M for the mission to be selected this summer). This year’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal,
however, proposes cutting the overall budget for NASA’s planetary with
reductions to the Discovery and New Frontiers missions in the out years to
refund the Mars program. (See this post
on the proposed budget. Current budget
plans provide full funding for the recently selected New Frontiers OSIRIS-REx
asteroid sample return mission and the Discovery mission to be selected this
summer. Budgets for these programs are
then reduced as funding for Mars missions increases, impacting the pace of
future mission selection.)

Along with the description of the current candidate missions, Nature
also discusses its assessment of the implications of rising mission complexity
and costs: “The growing lag — and the escalating costs and complexity that have caused it — is having a deleterious effect on the programme, some NASA observers say, because it creates an increasingly risk-averse approach to mission selection... All of this is why Gregg
Vane, the programme manager for mission formulation at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says that Discovery has strayed from its
original intended purpose, which was to be a riskier counterpoint to the too-big-to-fail
flagships. Failure is no longer an option for a Discovery mission either, he
says. ‘The tolerance for risk is significantly lower than it has been in the
past.’” NASA disputes this assessment: "Jim Green, director of NASA’s planetary-science division, flatly denies this charge. 'What is it about those [missions] that you think is averting risk?” he asked. “You can’t tell me that the missions we’ve executed in Discovery are not pushing the envelope.'"

Editorial Thoughts: NASA’s managers seemed trapped between a rock, the
easy low complexity compelling planetary missions have been done, and a hard
place, tightening budgets. Whichever of
the three current candidate missions is selected, it will provide compelling
science. I presume that the next set of
candidate missions will be equally compelling.
Within its constraints, NASA’s managers are finding exciting missions. (I have no way to assess whether or not, as Nature claims, the program is becoming more risk adverse.)

Any relief from this situation will have to come from the political
process. Adding an average of $75M per
year to the Discovery program should allow a third mission per decade. (The costs quoted above are for the Principle
Investigator costs; NASA has additional costs on top of the PI costs such as
launch costs and management costs. I’ve
never seen a full accounting of Discovery mission costs, but my back of the
envelope calculations suggest $750M may be right.) The House of Representative’s proposed FY13
budget would increase next year’s budget for the Discovery and New Frontiers
programs by$115M. (The Senate’s proposed
budget would not increase either budget.)
While the Nature article discusses the problems of the Discovery program
(budget cap currently at $425M) the New Frontiers program (budget cap currently
at ~$800M) seems to face similar problems.

The Discovery program has been a phenomenal success. I believe it deserves additional funding to
increase the pace of missions in the coming decade.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

If you are an ecologist, as I am, summer is likely to be your busy season. Phil Horzempa, who wrote the last post also, is kindly helping to fill the gap. With this post, Phil continues to look at the ideas presented at the Mars Concepts and Approaches Workshop with an emphasis on concepts for aerial missions. - VRK

Aerial Mobility and MPPG Strategy

The Mars Concepts workshop was a feast for those interested in
exploring the Red Planet.There were numerous suggestions for ways to get around
on Mars. In today’s post, I will focus on one sector - aerial mobility.

Balloons and airplanes were once touted as a way to obtain very
detailed visual images. However, proposals such as the MAGIC
ultra-high-resolution camera (1) promise to produce images from a Mars
orbiter that would make those systems obsolete. Multi-spectral imaging systems
with much higher resolution than the CRISM spectrometer onboard the MRO are
also being planned. Therefore, those who propose aerial systems have found new
uses for them.

One suitable task for an aerial platform would be to visit, up-close,
more sites than could a rover.Another advantage of aerial vehicles is the
ability to get to sites that are inaccessible to rovers, such as recurrent
gullies on crater rims. High-resolution, non-visual, non-infrared, remote
sensing is yet another. This would include searching for underground ice or
methane seeps, or high-resolution mapping of remanent magnetism in Mars'
ancient crust. In addition, with NASA now seeking synergy between manned and
unmanned Mars programs, the proposals often make a nod toward their usefulness
in obtaining precursor data.

There were proposals for balloons and airplanes at this meeting.However,
this worksop also featured presentations for aerial systems that are quite
innovative. Let's begin with a few of those concepts.

The first category includes Mars hoppers. This concept envisions a
lander that is able to make substantial hops from place to place on Mars. This
allows rover-class investigations to be conducted at widely separated
locations. One hopper proposal, by Moeller (2), could travel
approximately 70 km per hop. It would use radioisotope energy to run an in-situ
resource unit (ISRU) device to generate CO2 and O2. The CO2 is then
"burned" as rocket fuel for its thrusters. It takes a hop about every
200 days.A rather able, yet complex design.

Also in this category are hoppers that use compressed CO2. One of
these is Robert Zubrin's Gashopper vehicle (3). This design is
simplicity itself, as far as its fuel supply. It would use compressed Martian
air (essentially pure CO2) and use it as thruster "propellant." Elegant
in design, with no combustion chamber required. The Gashopper's fuel supply
would be unlimited - the atmosphere of Mars. The CO2 is stored as a liquid at
10 Bar pressure, with no cryogenic storage and handling required. As Zubrin
pointed out, CO2 is a poor rocket propellant, but it is readily available. To
produce thrust, the CO2 is passed over a 1,000K pellet bed. At 80 lb. of thrust
each, the thrusters can propel the Gashopper to a distance of 20 miles, if it
is a simple lander. However, with wings, each "hop" can be up to
several hundred kilometers. In this concept, the Hopper could carry a
mini-rover which would investigate each landing site for about a month, while
the Hopper was replenishing its CO2 supply. The Hopper itself could carry a
Ground Penetrating Radar, GPR, to search for underground ice deposits. (Figure 1)

Figure 1

Another example is the ASRG Geyser Hopper (4) which uses
hydrazine pulsed thrusters. The advantage in this concept is the use of proven
technology. This model of thruster was thoroughly tested for the Phoenix
lander, and performed splendidly.

The next proposal in this category was a combination mission - hopper
and entomopter (5). The hopper in this proposal mimics the jump
mechanics of a frog. It will have 4 legs, with the knee joints powered by a
pneumatic artificial muscle system. The muscles will use compressed CO2 drawn
from the Martian atmosphere. A typical jump will travel 300 meters
horizontally, with a maximum altitude of 150 meters. A proposed mission for
this hopper would investigate the Arsia Mons system of lava tubes/skylights in
the Tharsis region of Mars. (Figure 2) The hopper would position itself
close to one of the skylights, then launch an entomopter to investigate the interior.
An example of one of these bug-like robots was covered in my earlier post.

Figure 2

There were several balloon proposals. Their advantages include being
able to conduct aerial reconnaissance for weeks/months (as opposed to
short-duration planes), and needing no power to generate lift. These vehicles
can perform remote-sensing with higher fidelity than an orbiter. One example
was the PICCARD Discovery proposal. It had a 2-kg. payload, including
magnetometer and camera, and used an 11.5-meter diameter balloon. A beef-upped
version of this mission would include a 10-kg. high-resolution subsurface radar
mapper

One of the more interesting entries in this category was a hybrid
balloon/kite (6). The LArK mission would be targeted to investigate the skylights
in the Tharsis volcanic province. Figure 3. The LArK system would
include a science module that could be winched down to investigate a skylight
and/or lava tube, as the kite structure hovered overhead. Figure 4. One
advantage of this mission is that it makes this volcanic region accessible to
researchers. The Tharsis plateau is at an average altitude of 5 km., and is
thus is off-limits to currently developed technologies for landing on Mars
which need lower elevations for the parachutes to slow the lander sufficiently.

Figure 3

Figure 4

The gullies on Mars have generated a lot of interest, but like the
lava tube skylights, they are inherently difficult to investigate. One approach
to reaching them would be to use an electric helicopter. This proposal (7)
would target the gullies, or RSL's (Recurring Slope Lineae), that extend for
many meters down the slopes of Martian crater rims. Their origin is mysterious,
perhaps caused by liquid water, or other mechanisms, such as dry flow, as has
been seen on the Moon by the LRO. They are accessible from air, but could be
impossible for a rover to reach. This helicopter would hop from safe spot to
safe spot until it was within reach of an RSL.The NRL's (Naval Research
Laboratory) SPIDER electric unmanned helicopter can be considered to be a
prototype.

One of the more unusual entries in the aerial mobility theme is the
Mars Cannon Assisted Flying Exploration, or CAFE mission (8) would
launch small aircraft to swarm over a specific region, such as a canyon. Figure
5. The aircraft are packaged in ballistic shells that are launched using
compressed CO2. Here is yet another use of this simple ISRU method.

Figure 5

Regarding overall strategy, the Mars Program Planning Group, MPPG, has
issued an update that is fascinating and revealing. Reading the tea leaves of
this report (9), I am guessing that a likely scenario would see Mars
Sample Return take place at a reduced tempo. In fact, one exploration pathway
option in this report would see samples cached and placed into Mars orbit by
the late 2020's or early 2030's. The report states that samples orbiting Mars,
No Later Than 2033, for return to Earth by humans and/or robotic missions, is a
point of possible convergence for the parties involved. It is fascinating to
see how NASA's manned sector may now dovetail with the decades-long effort to
return samples from Mars.If this becomes the adopted exploration roadmap, then
NASA's unmanned science directorate need only worry about caching samples and
getting them as far as Mars orbit. The astronauts will take care of the rest. This
could be a major budget relief for NASA's solar system exploration program.

This document indicates that
NASA's budget cannot support a Rover mission in 2018. It seems that an orbiter
for that launch window is preferred for several reasons. There is the budget
restriction, but also a dire need for an orbital relay for present, and future,
surface missions. As the recent extended safe-mode for the 2001 Mars Orbiter
shows, existing orbital assets are aging. In addition, even though the MAVEN
Mars Orbiter will carry a relay radio link, its elliptical orbit will mean that
it will be within range of landed missions on a limited basis. Rover missions
require daily relay links in order to conduct a useful mission. Assuming a
MER-like lifetime, the MSL Rover should still be operating in 2018. In
addition, the ESA/Roscosmos Exomars rover should land that year, and may need
orbital relay services. Beyond that are any future NASA rovers or other surface
missions. This document indicates that the budget may support a rover mission
in 2020.

This report lists various "drivers" for future Mars
missions. Science is the top priority. However, another top priority is the
degree to which the program advances knowledge and capabilities required for
manned flight in the 2030's. This "marriage" may benefit both
programs. The unmanned missions, being tied to a long-range goal of human
exploration of Mars, may have access to a larger pool of funds. At the same
time, the manned program will have the data that it needs to realistically plan
missions. Also, with samples of Mars rocks waiting in orbit, there is an added
incentive to get astronauts out to the red planet.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.